INSTAPUNDIT’S ISTANBUL CORRESPONDENT CLAIRE BERLINSKI WRITES ON TURKEY AND ISLAM in the Washington Post:

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the Turkish Republic in 1923, imposed a particularly strict secularism on Turkish society, banning religion from the public sphere. In recent weeks, demonstrators have taken to the streets in massive numbers in support of Kemalist secularism. Westerners watching the footage may be tempted to sigh with approval, imagining this as an outpouring of sympathy with liberal Enlightenment values.

They would be mistaken.

Read the whole thing, which offers a lot of useful insights not found much elsewhere.